A Day of Terror

In early spring, Israel’s weather alternates capriciously between hot and dry and the torrential downpours of lingering winter rains. Yesterday, Saturday, March II, dawned fair and warm. Had the weather been less salubrious, the carnage that marked the day as one of the bloodiest and most tragic in Israel’s history might have been less extensive, or might not have occurred. The following events were pieced together from eye-witness accounts and police reports.

By mid-afternoon, thousands of Israelis were at the Mediterranean beaches, on the tennis courts and in swimming pools. Some 60-add men, women and children, mostly families of Egged bus cooperative employes, were returning from a pleasant nature tour of the northern countryside. Some of the youngsters, tired from their outing, slept in the back of their bus. A young Israeli woman photographer, employed by Time-Life, was in a rented car near the beach at Maagan Michael, south of Haifa.

None of these people could have had an inkling of the bloodbath and flames that would end their lives or send them, severely injured, into hospitals before the day was over.

At about 3:45 p.m. two Zodiac-type rubber dhingies reached the surf at Maagen Michael. Aboard were II heavily armed terrorists–two of them women–on a mission of death and destruction. They landed stealthily, unnoticed. They saw the young photographer in her small rented car. Reportedly they asked her for directions, then shot her to death. But the car could not hold the killers and their Russian-made arms and ammunition. They walked to the main coastal highway between Haifa and Tel Aviv and opened fire on passing vehicles.

FIRED AT PASSING CARS

The terrorists managed to commandeer a large Mercedes taxi. But it, too, could not contain them and their deadly equipment. From the taxi they fired at a northbound bus, hitting some of the passengers. The bus halted and its driver was ordered, at gunpoint, to turn around and head south toward Tel Aviv. A touring bus was also halted and its passengers ordered to board the hijacked bus. The terrorists had almost 70 hostages. They continued southward, firing at passing cars, killing or wounding their occupants.

By this time, police were alerted. Small patrols attempted to intercept the terrorists’ bus but were driven off by hand grenades, automatic fire and mortar shells. The bus raced through Nathanya. Police re-enforcements were brought up with orders to prevent the killers’ bus from entering Tel Aviv. A large roadblock was erected at Herzliya. Police and border police took positions on both sides of the road. As the hijacked bus approached, they fired at its tires. The bus was halted, machinegun and rocket fire blasting from its windows.

The terrorists had already wired explosives throughout the vehicle and tied their hostages to their seats. At the roadblock, they left the bus under cover of deadly fire. They lobbed a mortar shell into it and the bus exploded bringing fiery death to those inside. Six terrorists were felled by police fire and two were captured. Three, believed to have escaped, were identified late tonight among the dead on the bus. The only survivors among the passengers were those who managed to extricate themselves and leave the bus before it was blown up.

Eye-witnesses told of horrendous sights. A girl was running frantically near the burning bus. Her father had been burned to death. Her mother was hospitalized. Her two brothers were rescued by a police sergeant and taken to his home for the night. A physician took the girl to his home. Avraham Shamir, of Haifa, burned in both eyes and on his arm, told reporters at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv that he had grabbed a live hand grenade in the bus and tossed it out of a window.

Twenty-five of the victims were too badly burned to be identified. It fell to the soldiers, many of them young recruits who had never witnessed such sights, to remove the charred remains.